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It’s A Natural Born Thing- With Bluesman Taj Mahal In Mind-For Laura
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Sam Lowell and his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, had something of a standing question between them concerning seeing musical performers these days whom they had originally seen and admired in their younger days, those who were still alive if aging, and who were still putting on performances in public. The question: did, or did not, the performer have anything left from the old days or were they, the performers, and this was not an abstract question after seeing the painful decline of some artists which even kindness could not save, banking on nostalgic post-World War II baby-boomers now also having lost a step or two ignoring reality and give them a pass for old time sake. Worse losing all critical judgment and calling for encores.
That particular question had had taken on more urgency as the years have gone by since the number of performers from back in the day, from back in the 1950s classic age of rock and roll where only a few like Jerry Lee and a very wobbly Chuck Berry are still standing, from the folk minute of the 1960s where stalwarts like Dylan, Baez Rush and Paxton still play but that list is getting shorter by the year, from the seemingly eternal blues filled days where Muddy/Howlin’ Wolf/Mississippi John/James Cotton/Koko Taylor/Etta James and almost all the old names known through flipping through the bins at Cheapo’s in Central Square, Cambridge have passed on, whose music had bailed Sam out of more than one funk. Yeah, many had hung up their instruments or had passed to the great beyond had been mounting with alarming frequency as Sam and Laura have reached old age themselves, oops, matured.
That passing from the scene, and that nagging question about who did or did not have it now, was no small thing to the music crazed pair so Sam and Laura had over the previous several years been attentive when any of the venues they frequented had booked old time rock, folk or blues performers (the latter like James Montgomery mostly now those who had sat at the feet of the 1960s legends). Every time they did go to concert they would make the same comment, and would reflect as well on previous concerts to give a roll call of who or who did not make the cut. Sam insisted this analysis was no academic matter as recent concerts have attested to (although members of the academy, budding members itching to write that big definitive dissertation about the important message about teen angst and alienation in Jerry High School Confidential, who Dylan wrote Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowland for, and the truth of whether the blues ain’t nothing but a good woman on your mind that knock the known world on its head with insightful nuggets about such speculation are probably even as I write running through the possibilities).
Take, for example, what for Sam and Laura is the classic case of Bob Dylan and his seemingly endless tour (and now endless production of bootleg material placed in appropriately numbered CD containers, some very good, others which should have been left on the editing floor), the man, no matter what number of tours he feels he has to perform each year can no longer sing, no way. He gets a thumbs down on this question, no question, although only a fool would throw away their treasure trove of Dylania from the golden days from about 1960 to a little after 1970 since that is what will have to sustain us all in the slow nights ahead. Same thing was true several years ago about the late Etta James who had stolen the show at the Newport Folk Festival in the mid-1990s (from none other than the headliner Chuck Berry who was ancient even then) but who when last seen was something of an embarrassment. Another thumbs down. Going the other way recent concerts by a couple of members of the old Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur, at Club Passim in Cambridge (the former Club 47 of blessed folk minute memory where Sam fled to when times were tough at home in high school and he needed that spot or when without dough the Hayes-Bickford to keep him going) showed that they both had increased their knowledge and respect for the American songbook and that they still had it (a concert a few years ago, also in Cambridge, by another member of that jug band, Maria Muldaur, solo, and later when the three united for a 50th anniversary of the band reunion showed she still had it as well). As did a concert a few years ago by the late Jesse Winchester.
Sam and Laura had jumped at the opportunity to see deep-voiced, kick ass bluesman Taj Mahal who was making one of his now less frequent stage appearances at the Rockport Music Hall up in that North Shore town by the Atlantic about forty miles from Boston, on the Sunday of the Patriot’s Day weekend (that Patriot’s Day, a Massachusetts state holiday of sorts, commemorating the time a bunch of determined American farmers and small tradesmen, many of whose forbears had been kicked out of Mother England under threat of the gallows, gave old John Bull all the hell he wanted out in Concord and Lexington).
On the afternoon of the concert as they were riding up the highway Sam kept thinking to himself the eternal question of whether old Taj still had the old magic that he had shown over a decade before when they had last seen him in Somerville where he had brought the house down. He mentioned that concern to Laura who added, having been through all the concert wars of the last decade or so with Sam and had observed the fit and halt going about their business, she hoped he was not too frail to hold the instruments. Of course once they got on the subject of who did and who did not still have it they had to run through the litany as well as acts that they hoped to see before the performers faded from view. That “game” got them through the hour’s ride as they hit the long one lane road into Rockport and the concert hall.
Sam had wondered since this concert had been scheduled as a late afternoon concert (something that both he and Laura were happy about since as they joked the concert’s timing would not interrupt their normal bedtimes like most concerts, maybe not interrupt Taj’s sleep schedule either) whether the Shalin Liu Performance Center (the official name for the concert hall opened in an old converted and expanded storefront building in 2010) would have the ocean view windows in back of the stage open or closed. They had been to this venue a couple of times before so they knew that it was at the artist’s discretion whether that was done although with Sam’s personal maniacal love of the ocean he hoped that it would be open to give an appealing backdrop to the music inside. (Laura, generally indifferent to the ocean’s allure being a farm-bred woman, had no opinion on the matter.) As they entered the hall Sam noticed that the curtains were closed but since he and Laura had taken a short walk to the ocean before the show began he was not that bothered by the situation. (Later, as they were driving home, Sam laughed to himself that he was so transfixed by the performance that he hardly noticed the curtains were closed. Laughed too that old Taj had probably had the damn things closed because he intended some serious business not to be distracted by some silly ocean waves crashing tepidly to shore that day.)
This Shalin Liu hall has many virtues beside the ocean view, small (about 300 seats), good views from all around, very good acoustics and lighting, and seats on the second floor that overlook the stage. For this concert Sam and Laura were seated in that overlook area and the first thing Sam noticed after sitting down was the bright shiny National Steel guitar, shades of old preacher/devil man Son House and his flailing away on Death Letter Blues and Bukka White, sweat pouring from every pore be-bopping away on Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues and Panama, Limited. He also noticed a slide guitar but did not remember that Taj played the slide as he racked his brain to try to remember any Taj songs he knew that included the slide. Noticed too that there was a banjo, piano, a couple of non-descript guitars, and a ukulele. Taj had come, armed and dangerous, a good sign.
As the lights dimmed and the crowd hushed for the performance to start out came Taj, along with his drummer and lead guitarist, looking for all the world like the ghost of every bluesman than anybody could imagine coming out of Highway 61 in the Delta ready to make his bargain with the devil in order to be able to hit that high white note once in a while. Anybody who took his or her blues seriously that is. A big burly man (looking back at photographs from old albums at home later on the Internet Sam noticed that Taj, like a lot of us, had moved from the slender side to more robust as he aged), soft felt hat like a lot of Chicago blues guys wore, indoors or out, a big old blue flowered shirt and dangling from one ear the now obligatory pierced earring. Sam closed his eyes thinking about guys that had that same look, no, the ghost of guys now, guys like Little Walter, Magic, Slim, James Cotton, Sunnyland Slim, Big Joe Williams, legends all and maybe Taj by his appearance was putting in his application to join the guys.
And for the next almost two hours without the usualintermission to disturb the flow of the music Taj made good on two things, yeah, as you probably already figured, the brother still had it, and, yes, he was making serious application to the pantheon, move over guys. Right out of the block came the National Steel and Sam whispered to Laura that this was going to be serious stuff as he covered Henry Thomas’ classic Fishing Blues, Good Morning Miss Brown, Corrina, Going Up To The Country and Paint My Mailbox Blue, John Henry. Later Taj worked on the piano, the uke, the non-descript guitars, and the banjo before coming back to the encore with the National Steel on his signature Lovin’ In My Baby’s Arms. The treat for Sam though was when Taj strapped that big old slide guitar on and covered the legendary slide guitar man Elmore James’ Television Mama. Whoa!
But the songs were just filler really once it was clear from the very first song that Taj was on fire that late afternoon, once they knew that they were going to take the ticket, and take ride. It was more the mood that Taj put Sam in, put him into that swaying, foot-tapping, finger-snapping feeling when he and the music mesh and the outside world for that duration fades. The mood too that hit Laura as he would watch her, a very prim lady most of the time, swaying dreamily with the beat, tapping the bannister in front of her, tapping those feet just like him. Oh, very heaven.
Later as they walked down the stairs after the performance was over the both automatically stated the obvious in their understated way-“yeah, old Taj still has it.” Case closed. Oh well, almost closed because as they were driving back to Boston Sam mentioned that that concert was one of the top ten they had ever seen. Laura agreed.
Memories Of Rick-With Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” In Mind
By Seth Garth
[Before he passed away in the late 1980s the long time French police officer, Commandant Louis Renault (everybody, everybody but the bad guys who crossed his path and there were plenty and not all of them Germans, called him “Louie” for his mild-mannered easy style when he was not in hot pursuit of some nefarious types)who had worked both in colonial Algeria and French Morocco before heading back home to work with the National Police in his hometown of Lyon, liked to sit in the Café Algiers there and reminisce about all his adventures as a cop. When asked about the most memorable person, friend or foe, he had been up against in his times he would without much hesitation blurt out the name of Rick Blaine.
Rick of Rick’s Café in Casablanca when Louie had worked in French Morocco early in World War II after the fall of the French Republic and the rise of the Vichy government which controlled that colony then. He as a police officer noted the changing of the guard and went about his business as usual-regimes come and go he had always said but the cops are forever. After investigation of Rick’s past, most of the early part as a tough guy out of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City a place where Rick would make people laugh when he said even the mighty Germans would think twice about occupying and had included some troubling adventurous activity for the “wrong” side in Ethiopia and Spain during the 1930s, he, after having had his palm “greased” issued the liquor and nightclub license for Rick to keep his Cafe Americian open under his prefecture.
For most of the time he knew Rick in Casablanca they had had a good working relationship. Rick would let him “win” at the roulette wheel as his pay-off for letting illegal gambling go on in full sight, “comp” him for drinks and dope, mostly hashish, and let him have his women “rejects” on the rebound. Then she came in, came in as Rick said one drunken night when she had her claws in him bad again “of all the gin joints in all the world she had to show up at his door.” From then on things got interesting, very interesting. The following is a translation by Jean Marais of what Louie had to say when he was asked by a National Police archivist for details of his relationship with one Rick Blaine (1920-1982)-SG]
“That Rick Blaine was a piece of work, one of the last of the pre-war, pre-World War II if anybody is asking which war we are talking about, romantics tilting his lance at the windmills in the name of love-or the thrill of adventure, maybe even the thrill of tweaking somebody’s nose just for the hell of it, Louie Renault was reminiscing out loud to those who were attending his retirement party. Retirement from the National Police, [the French coppers although they are not national cops like the FBI in America but just like city and town cops there run through the central government], the guys who keep order in places like Paris and Lyon (since it was a governmental pension he was about to receive after much haggling his service during Vichy times first in Algiers and then in French-controlled Morocco, in Casablanca, was included as well as his Lyon assignments). He had been asked a question by one of the younger policer officers about what was his most memorable episode in a long and illustrious career. Of course Louie had to go back to those early war days when he ran the operation for Vichy in godforsaken Casablanca to find some events, some characters who could qualify for what that young officer was asking about. Had to go back to Rick Blaine without question.
“Yes, Rick was the real thing, I wasn’t kidding when I mentioned his name,” Louie blurted out when the officer did not comprehend why a guy whom he had on other occasions called nothing but a saloon keeper, a guy out for himself whatever checkered past he might have had rated so high. “Let me fill you and see if I am not right about this whole matter.” He would say out of earshot that even De Gaulle would gladly take a back seat after hearing this story since he was safely in London being a pain in the ass to the British and American while “little guys” like Rick and a guy who looked pretty big even by De Gaulle standards Victor Lazlo were mercilessly tweaking the German’s tail.
“Once the Germans marched into Paris they controlled the whole political situation but since they couldn’t handle a total occupation of France and wreak havoc on the rest of Europe at the same time they left part of the country to the French military, to General Petain who worked out of Vichy, the place where the specialized water comes from. Yeah, collaborators, liked they used to try to hang on me before Rick came to Casablanca, Lazlo too, and got everybody well. I had been in Algiers during that time but once the new political reality hit I was assigned to run the police operations in bloody Casablanca-a backwater where every odd-ball thing could and did happen as well as plenty of illegal stuff from dope to women to smuggling. Just my cup of tea. I figured that I could make more graft there in the Casbah than staying in Algiers once the British and Americans got serious about dislodging the Germans from Northern Africa.
“No sooner had I landed in Casablanca then I spied Rick’s place, Rick’s Café Americian he called it, a place where there was plenty of booze, women, gambling, dope and whatever else you wanted. Or wanted done-life was cheap there-dirt cheap. The bloody Arabs could barely keep themselves busy except when some silly “blood honor” thing came up and we had to pick up the mess after the killings. Some he said, the other guy said stuff and then bang-bang. Had to arrest about fifteen people, family members from both sides and show them a little baton to the head just to let them know we meant business. Nobody ever faulted me on that score. I walked in and introduced myself to Rick without saying anything further. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye he said later after all the smoke had cleared and we could be honest with each other, sized me up and down and knowing that I would do “business” after that appraisal said would the previous arrangement with the Prefect I was replacing be okay- a cut of the profits, a slice of the gambling [paid out by his “winning at roulette” with lucky red 22], my pick of women, free liquor and dope, and deep discounts on anything else I needed. Also told me of his dealings, his working relationships for dope, booze and Moslem women which it seemed some of the Europeans were crazy for although I was strictly for the low-rent French tarts who found Casablanca easy on their virtue, with Sydney Greenstreet, an émigré merchant of sorts from England over in the Casbah. I immediately issued the necessary licenses that each new Prefect was entitled to issue as was my prerogative. Done.
“This Rick was a hard guy to figure though the more I ran into him on the street or more regularly in his place either to grab some young woman, to grab my cut, to “win” at roulette, or just to have some high shelf bonded whiskey that I became very fond of. Somebody said, I think it was Frenchie the main bartender, that Rick had had some kind of an adventurous past, had run some guns to Ethiopia when they were trying to hold off the Italians when Mussolini was flexing his muscles and later fought with the International Brigades, with the Communists in Spain when Franco was working up to flexing his muscles. I had already known that past from the files the previous Prefect had left and from a couple of snitches I had run through Rick’s place but the “grease” from Rick’s deal said otherwise in my eyes. When I first met him he was all business like I said, if you said green he said okay what shade, that kind of thing.
“Somebody said, maybe it was Frenchie again since I sat at the bar of the joint many a night to “enforce” the no gambling regulation and to drink a few high shelf scotches, that Rick had been unlucky in love and that was why when he, Rick, had his choice of any girl he wanted, two if he was feeling frisky, would take them up to his office and apartment upstairs from the club, do whatever it was that they did, some wild stuff I heard from a couple of them that I caught on the “rebound” especially from one who took him “around the world” which she would later do with me and the next night would not know them. Tell them to sell their wares in the Casbah, a low thing to say to a European woman if you knew anything at all about what went on in the Casbah. I never went there personally but would sent for this Greenstreet to deliver me my graft and whatever dope I was looking for at the time. Like I said mainly hashish from the pipe. In the end it would be that lost love that had been bothering Rick once she came to town but early on you couldn’t tell what was eating at him. Just knew that he had a chip on his shoulder which would not fall off.
“Jesus, in those days there were all kinds of people as you can imagine trying to get out of Europe for one reason or another and once France and the countries around it fell to the Germans that was doubled up. Homeless, stateless Jews, who we all knew were being savaged by the Germans and by Vichy too, International Brigaders who couldn’t go back to their occupied homelands, local Communists who didn’t get or who couldn’t get underground, anybody out of the ordinary, we even had a couple of kids, rich kids who had left Hamburg once Hitler said that jazz was a Negro-Jew conspiracy and banned the music. If you looked at a map of Europe in say 1941 you would notice that there was not much wiggle room to work with in order to get out of some occupied spot. The road out though however they got there led to Casablanca no matter what the individual reason for leaving Europe was. The link. The air flights to Lisbon and from there anyplace but the old canard Europe.
“So you know that there was plenty of money to be made by those daring enough to act as smugglers to get these desperate people out one way or another. I could have made plenty if I had decided to use my position to get real greedy but I didn’t want to deal with a bunch of desperate people bothering me about why they weren’t getting out fast enough. Rick and the Casbah made me plenty-for a while. All the action either went through that guy Sidney Greenstreet who ran his operation out of the Casbah where he mainly handled small fry, people of no account but with money, or at Rick’s for the higher class clientele. Mostly the wealthier Jews and previously high placed officials of democratic governments who the Germans were desperate to find and make an example out off for their compatriots under occupation. Some seriously shady characters, art forgers, crazed jazz aficionados, con artists, three card monte hustlers, independent dope dealers-mainly heroin out of the Afghan fields working their way West to the cities, jack-rollers, rapists and assorted slugs, characters who even we had to keep an eye on to keep any kind of order plopped themselves there.
“Things though were going fine until some horse’s asses, as it turned out guys we had on our radar but couldn’t quite nab, decided they would murder a couple of German couriers and grab a couple of letters of transit they were travelling with. Now these letters of transit were like gold-would make their possessor a pot of gold. Maybe two pots if they worked it right. These were no questions asked documents which only had to have names filled in order to catch a flight to Lisbon and from there wherever else they wanted to go. This weasel, well known to us from a couple of rip-off jobs he did on unsuspecting travelers, a guy named Peter Lorre was part of the gang who took the couriers down. One night he showed up at Rick’s the natural place to start looking for high-end buyers and we nailed him-took him in “custody” but he didn’t have the letters of transit on him. He hanged himself in his cell before we could get much more out of him. Rick had been as cool as a cucumber when this weasel, this sweaty little nobody showed his ugly face there. This Lorre begged Rick to hide him. Rick just blew him off, told him to get lost. A couple of customers made noises when we grabbed and manhandled Lorre saying they wouldn’t patronize Rick’s again because of his attitude in the matter. Rick told them something that impressed me at the time-he wasn’t sticking his neck out for anybody. Those customers by the way were back the next night when I let Rick reopen the place and he sent them over a couple of drinks. They were his best buddies then.
“That courier murder business though would lay us all low. See the Germans had sent over this hard-ass major, Major Veidt (sic) I think his name was if I remember the name correctly, to look into the matter. I was trying to impress him so he would put in a good word for me with Vichy. That was the whole idea behind making a big deal out of the Lorre arrest (and I was happy when he hung himself because he would have not stood up well under German methods and he might have spilled who knows what about what was going on in Casablanca at the time). That made Rick’s gesture at the time this guy Lorre begged him to save him from my men even more important. Rick just looked the other way and Lorre was a goner. We never did get the other guys in with Lorre when we rounded up, our what did we call them, oh yes, “usual suspects”, Communists and con men and a few whores who we regularly rounded up to fill the jails full and make it look like we were doing our jobs. Some wound up out in a desert graveyard once we were done with them.
“Like I said in those days all kinds of people were coming through town. One of them a guy I mentioned before and said I would speak of again named Victor Lazlo had escaped from a German concentration camp and somehow he had worked his way through whatever network he had in Europe to Casablanca. This Lazlo was well-known as a leader of the resistance to the German occupations of half of Europe so a guy whom the Germans, especially this Major Veidt, were foaming at the mouth to get their hands on. But as long as he didn’t do anything illegal I had no reason to arrest him. I had half-figured when I heard he was in town to see who the highest bidder, strictly cash, was for his hide and take my cut that way.
“I really shouldn’t short-change this guy Lazlo, a lot of people even blasé don’t give a fuck Casablanca denizens full of booze, dopes and bad luck were ready to follow him, ready to help him give the Germans and Vichy a black eye. To me though he was just another guy who if he got what he wanted would still depend on guys like me to keep the mud of the earth off their shoes. Still he had a way about him even though he looked like some goddam professor from the Sorbonne who were a dime a dozen when it came to action on their ideas You had to respect a little anyway a man who could avoid the bloody talon clutches of the Gestapo when those guys were riding high, had agents, spies and snitches in every organization including the resistance. I know since I had a couple of my stoolies working for me on the local resistance which as I will tell you in a minute helped me, me go along Louie, the nice cop, grab him right from under the Germans’ noses.
“Let me give you an example about this Lazlo that I remember because I was in Rick’s the night it happened. This Major Veidt was having a party, a drunken officers and their damn collaborator bitches’ party, singing old German and Nazi songs at the top of their lungs. Lazlo came in, saw the play and fuming after a few cognacs decided very un-professor- like to tweak the Germans’ noses. He started up with some patriotic French and Czech songs, that was the place where he was from so he definitely had grievances against the Nazis, and the crowd went with him. Yeah, this was guy people would follow, people who ordinarily wouldn’t say boo. Such hungry men are dangerous. Lazlo was doomed from that night on and I have half-expected the Germans to take him out for the desert sights right then.
“But here is where things got interesting. Interesting to me once I got bored with the play with Lazlo and the Germans. This Lazlo, besides what I said about his presence was a good-looking guy in the old-fashioned sense of the term with good manners, a proper bourgeois under normal circumstances but more noticeable once you knew he had escaped the German clutches, and a good tipper according to Frenchie, was not travelling alone. He had this beautiful woman with him, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen then or now, Ilsa something, I am not sure we ever knew her last name and it didn’t matter with a beauty like that. When she showed up our Rick went crazy, went crazy like a loon. See as we all found out later he had come to Casablanca just ahead of the German armies advancing on Paris with this black guy who was an entertainer, a singer and piano player named Sam and a sour look on his face. He had “known” Ilsa in Paris, had been her fancy man from what I could tell. No way that they had separate rooms in quaint old pre-war Paris. They were supposed to blow town together and meet at the train station one evening on the last train out of Paris before the Germans stopped the trains. She was a “no show.” She was in living color the reason that Rick had been so indifferent to everything. Why he turned over perfectly good women to me without batting an eyelash.
“Of course the minute she showed up the old flames were re-kindled-for both of them. She had spied Sam at the piano through the heavily smoke-filled room, had forced him to play “their” song, If I Didn’t Care I think and when Rick heard that he went ballistic, was ready to come to blows with Sam since Sam had been ordered never to play the song. Then he spotted her across the piano and he melted down like an ice cube. It seems that in Paris she had assumed her husband, this Lazlo was dead, had been killed by the Germans. False report. That last day in Paris she found out through some underground source that Lazlo was still alive and she had gone to him. Leaving Rick standing in the rain at the fucking train station. Naturally all of this stuff I learned later but that “left standing in the rain” is what drove Rick to get up on his high horse and create nothing but trouble for me and my men once she came into view.
“You know this Ilsa was no question a beauty, soft-spoken, had a scent of desert bloom or jasmine who knows something exotic coming off of her every time I came within three feet of her. Not my kind of woman not that I would have thrown her out of bed but she seemed a bit too ethereal for my tastes. Didn’t seem the slightest bit political (and Rick said she wasn’t which is why he was attracted to her in Paris the first place having just come over the Pyrenees from that losing fight in Spain and maybe why Lazlo kept her by his side too). Didn’t seem anything but beautiful and with good manners as well but figure two tough guys were attracted to her for keeps and she had sometimes that jangled their nerves if you get my drift. I figured her like this though some women, and by no means all of them, are meant for love. Are built up in such a way that guys have to get next to them or die trying. Outside of that very important trait they if seen walking by would fade from view after a few sighs. That was Ilsa, smart, yes, steady, yes, loyal, depends, but made for love, made to stand beside and steady a man of the world. Allow him to do those things he had to do to make himself complete. Christ, enough of that I am talking like some old washer woman. Back to the Rick end of things.
“That long gone Lorre had given Rick the letters of transit to keep for him the night Rick looked the other way when we grabbed the weasel and made him squeal or whatever weasels do when they are caught. When with Rick’s help he fell down, wound up at the end of his checkered tie, Rick figured that he would use the letters to get himself out of hellhole Casablanca. He said that even Hell’s Kitchen in New York where he had grown up (and had “advised” the Germans to think twice about trying to occupy if you recall) was less dangerous than Casablanca so you get an idea how bad things were-how cheap life was on in the desert. Worse than the bloody wogs the British were always moaning about in the Raj, in India. He wasn’t going alone though. She, Ilsa, was going with him. She had snuck up into his apartment one night when Lazlo was out doing his organizing of the local resistance. As a result of that outlawed meeting I had Lazlo picked up when he surfaced, you couldn’t have such meetings and I knew that German major would be happy to hear that I had the great Victor Lazlo locked up like a caged animal.
“Whatever Rick and Ilsa did and from what Frenchie said Oscar the head waiter told him they had definitely gone under the sheets from his disheveled look and the blush on her face when Rick told Oscar to escort her home they were blowing town together. When Oscar told me that story a few days later I wondered about what had happened. What had made sour Rick decide to blow a good thing in Casablanca (my good thing too don’t forget). No question Ilsa was a beauty, an exceptional beauty but after the way she had left him high and dry in Paris I figured maybe a quick roll in the hay and then off alone. But you never know about beautiful women, sometimes they can be just as kinky as any whore or any low-rent tart. She didn’t look that way but maybe with a few drinks and an agenda of her own-like getting Lazlo out- alone- she took him around the world like that ex-flame Lisette had.
“Somehow and I never could get him to tell me exactly what happened he had had an epiphany after that night some kind of turnaround. All he would say back then was the way the world was just then the troubles of three people, him, Ilsa and Lazlo weren’t worth a hill of beans compared what was going on. But whatever the source from then on he was on fire, was maybe thinking back to that old fight in Spain, thought about some payback for lost comrades, maybe what would happen if the Germans won, maybe he just didn’t like that Major Veidt and his arrogant ways closing up his café when the high rollers were coming in for their weekend beatings.
“So he gave Ilsa one story about how they should meet at the airport and blow town. She was all over that idea and had dropped any mention of Lazlo. He told me another. Talked me into a deal that when I thought about it later I should have figured was bullshit from minute number one. Confessed to me that he had the letters. Was blowing town with Ilsa and that was that. He said -let’s do this though. Let Lazlo out, let him get to the airport with the letters and grab him as an accessory for the courier murders. A feather in my cap was all I could think of. Would get that fucking Major Veidt off my back about picking up Lazlo and showing him the desert sights. When the deal went down though Rick was faking the whole thing. Maybe not about wanting to flee with Ilsa but about his attitude toward Lazlo. He had convinced me of his plan but when the deal went down I was the fall guy, well, one of the fall guys. That German major took the big fall when he tried to stop the plane to Lisbon as Lazlo and Ilsa got on the plane. Rick took him down without a murmur in one clean shot making me wonder how the Loyalists lost in Spain with a guy like that working with them.
“Needless to say when I was caught in a bind I stepped away from danger by refusing to arrest Rick. I went into the usual dodge-round up the usual suspects, double it up this time since a goddam German major was under the ground. I resolved the bind I was in pretty simply. I figured my days in Morocco were finished and so I saw the writing on the wall. I walked away with Rick (an action that I was successfully able to use in order to have my service time there count toward my retirement which I had many hassles over before I won). We made our way to Brazzaville with the dough Rick grabbed from Greenstreet when Rick sold him his interest in the café. I stayed there grabbing my graft until the end of the war and had worked various grifts with Rick until he went back to Europe a few months later where he joined up with the French resistance, worked with Samuel Beckett the exiled Irish playwright who was deeply into the organization from what I heard later. I heard from him a few times over the years before he passed away a few years ago. I guess Casablanca was in his blood because after the war he ran the Café Casablanca in New York City for some thirty years before he gave it up to retire. But what a guy that Rick was, giving up that luscious piece for unsung glory underground in France. Making that big gesture for love. Yeah, the last of the pre-war romantics.
On The 100th Annivesary (2017) -Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-"Year One of the Russian Revolution"-Victor Serge
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin
Book Review
Year One of the Russian Revolution-Victor Serge I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.
The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.
Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And try to stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated Russia as the weakest link in the capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.
The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as Utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the specific Russian Question as a factor in world politics anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.
It’s A Natural Born Thing- With Bluesman Taj Mahal In Mind-For Laura
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Sam Lowell and his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, had something of a standing question between them concerning seeing musical performers these days whom they had originally seen and admired in their younger days, those who were still alive if aging, and who were still putting on performances in public. The question: did, or did not, the performer have anything left from the old days or were they, the performers, and this was not an abstract question after seeing the painful decline of some artists which even kindness could not save, banking on nostalgic post-World War II baby-boomers now also having lost a step or two ignoring reality and give them a pass for old time sake. Worse losing all critical judgment and calling for encores.
That particular question had had taken on more urgency as the years have gone by since the number of performers from back in the day, from back in the 1950s classic age of rock and roll where only a few like Jerry Lee and a very wobbly Chuck Berry are still standing, from the folk minute of the 1960s where stalwarts like Dylan, Baez Rush and Paxton still play but that list is getting shorter by the year, from the seemingly eternal blues filled days where Muddy/Howlin’ Wolf/Mississippi John/James Cotton/Koko Taylor/Etta James and almost all the old names known through flipping through the bins at Cheapo’s in Central Square, Cambridge have passed on, whose music had bailed Sam out of more than one funk. Yeah, many had hung up their instruments or had passed to the great beyond had been mounting with alarming frequency as Sam and Laura have reached old age themselves, oops, matured.
That passing from the scene, and that nagging question about who did or did not have it now, was no small thing to the music crazed pair so Sam and Laura had over the previous several years been attentive when any of the venues they frequented had booked old time rock, folk or blues performers (the latter like James Montgomery mostly now those who had sat at the feet of the 1960s legends). Every time they did go to concert they would make the same comment, and would reflect as well on previous concerts to give a roll call of who or who did not make the cut. Sam insisted this analysis was no academic matter as recent concerts have attested to (although members of the academy, budding members itching to write that big definitive dissertation about the important message about teen angst and alienation in Jerry High School Confidential, who Dylan wrote Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowland for, and the truth of whether the blues ain’t nothing but a good woman on your mind that knock the known world on its head with insightful nuggets about such speculation are probably even as I write running through the possibilities).
Take, for example, what for Sam and Laura is the classic case of Bob Dylan and his seemingly endless tour (and now endless production of bootleg material placed in appropriately numbered CD containers, some very good, others which should have been left on the editing floor), the man, no matter what number of tours he feels he has to perform each year can no longer sing, no way. He gets a thumbs down on this question, no question, although only a fool would throw away their treasure trove of Dylania from the golden days from about 1960 to a little after 1970 since that is what will have to sustain us all in the slow nights ahead. Same thing was true several years ago about the late Etta James who had stolen the show at the Newport Folk Festival in the mid-1990s (from none other than the headliner Chuck Berry who was ancient even then) but who when last seen was something of an embarrassment. Another thumbs down. Going the other way recent concerts by a couple of members of the old Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim Kweskin and Geoff Muldaur, at Club Passim in Cambridge (the former Club 47 of blessed folk minute memory where Sam fled to when times were tough at home in high school and he needed that spot or when without dough the Hayes-Bickford to keep him going) showed that they both had increased their knowledge and respect for the American songbook and that they still had it (a concert a few years ago, also in Cambridge, by another member of that jug band, Maria Muldaur, solo, and later when the three united for a 50th anniversary of the band reunion showed she still had it as well). As did a concert a few years ago by the late Jesse Winchester.
Sam and Laura had jumped at the opportunity to see deep-voiced, kick ass bluesman Taj Mahal who was making one of his now less frequent stage appearances at the Rockport Music Hall up in that North Shore town by the Atlantic about forty miles from Boston, on the Sunday of the Patriot’s Day weekend (that Patriot’s Day, a Massachusetts state holiday of sorts, commemorating the time a bunch of determined American farmers and small tradesmen, many of whose forbears had been kicked out of Mother England under threat of the gallows, gave old John Bull all the hell he wanted out in Concord and Lexington).
On the afternoon of the concert as they were riding up the highway Sam kept thinking to himself the eternal question of whether old Taj still had the old magic that he had shown over a decade before when they had last seen him in Somerville where he had brought the house down. He mentioned that concern to Laura who added, having been through all the concert wars of the last decade or so with Sam and had observed the fit and halt going about their business, she hoped he was not too frail to hold the instruments. Of course once they got on the subject of who did and who did not still have it they had to run through the litany as well as acts that they hoped to see before the performers faded from view. That “game” got them through the hour’s ride as they hit the long one lane road into Rockport and the concert hall.
Sam had wondered since this concert had been scheduled as a late afternoon concert (something that both he and Laura were happy about since as they joked the concert’s timing would not interrupt their normal bedtimes like most concerts, maybe not interrupt Taj’s sleep schedule either) whether the Shalin Liu Performance Center (the official name for the concert hall opened in an old converted and expanded storefront building in 2010) would have the ocean view windows in back of the stage open or closed. They had been to this venue a couple of times before so they knew that it was at the artist’s discretion whether that was done although with Sam’s personal maniacal love of the ocean he hoped that it would be open to give an appealing backdrop to the music inside. (Laura, generally indifferent to the ocean’s allure being a farm-bred woman, had no opinion on the matter.) As they entered the hall Sam noticed that the curtains were closed but since he and Laura had taken a short walk to the ocean before the show began he was not that bothered by the situation. (Later, as they were driving home, Sam laughed to himself that he was so transfixed by the performance that he hardly noticed the curtains were closed. Laughed too that old Taj had probably had the damn things closed because he intended some serious business not to be distracted by some silly ocean waves crashing tepidly to shore that day.)
This Shalin Liu hall has many virtues beside the ocean view, small (about 300 seats), good views from all around, very good acoustics and lighting, and seats on the second floor that overlook the stage. For this concert Sam and Laura were seated in that overlook area and the first thing Sam noticed after sitting down was the bright shiny National Steel guitar, shades of old preacher/devil man Son House and his flailing away on Death Letter Blues and Bukka White, sweat pouring from every pore be-bopping away on Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues and Panama, Limited. He also noticed a slide guitar but did not remember that Taj played the slide as he racked his brain to try to remember any Taj songs he knew that included the slide. Noticed too that there was a banjo, piano, a couple of non-descript guitars, and a ukulele. Taj had come, armed and dangerous, a good sign.
As the lights dimmed and the crowd hushed for the performance to start out came Taj, along with his drummer and lead guitarist, looking for all the world like the ghost of every bluesman than anybody could imagine coming out of Highway 61 in the Delta ready to make his bargain with the devil in order to be able to hit that high white note once in a while. Anybody who took his or her blues seriously that is. A big burly man (looking back at photographs from old albums at home later on the Internet Sam noticed that Taj, like a lot of us, had moved from the slender side to more robust as he aged), soft felt hat like a lot of Chicago blues guys wore, indoors or out, a big old blue flowered shirt and dangling from one ear the now obligatory pierced earring. Sam closed his eyes thinking about guys that had that same look, no, the ghost of guys now, guys like Little Walter, Magic, Slim, James Cotton, Sunnyland Slim, Big Joe Williams, legends all and maybe Taj by his appearance was putting in his application to join the guys.
And for the next almost two hours without the usualintermission to disturb the flow of the music Taj made good on two things, yeah, as you probably already figured, the brother still had it, and, yes, he was making serious application to the pantheon, move over guys. Right out of the block came the National Steel and Sam whispered to Laura that this was going to be serious stuff as he covered Henry Thomas’ classic Fishing Blues, Good Morning Miss Brown, Corrina, Going Up To The Country and Paint My Mailbox Blue, John Henry. Later Taj worked on the piano, the uke, the non-descript guitars, and the banjo before coming back to the encore with the National Steel on his signature Lovin’ In My Baby’s Arms. The treat for Sam though was when Taj strapped that big old slide guitar on and covered the legendary slide guitar man Elmore James’ Television Mama. Whoa!
But the songs were just filler really once it was clear from the very first song that Taj was on fire that late afternoon, once they knew that they were going to take the ticket, and take ride. It was more the mood that Taj put Sam in, put him into that swaying, foot-tapping, finger-snapping feeling when he and the music mesh and the outside world for that duration fades. The mood too that hit Laura as he would watch her, a very prim lady most of the time, swaying dreamily with the beat, tapping the bannister in front of her, tapping those feet just like him. Oh, very heaven.
Later as they walked down the stairs after the performance was over the both automatically stated the obvious in their understated way-“yeah, old Taj still has it.” Case closed. Oh well, almost closed because as they were driving back to Boston Sam mentioned that that concert was one of the top ten they had ever seen. Laura agreed.
In Boston- Smedley Butler Brigade- VFP Invitation To March With Us On Armistice Day-Saturday November 11th-We would be pleased to have you join us.
Put Your Marching Sneakers On… Armistice Day For Peace Saturday November 11, 2017
It is that time again. Every year for well over a decade we have had our Armistice Peace March behind the “official” Veterans Day parade in Boston. We continue that tradition this year as well.
Meet at the Corner Of Beacon Street and Charles at the far end of Boston Common at Noon
We will form up at the corner of Beacon Street and Charles at the edge of the Boston Common at noon for an approximately 1 PM step off. (Depending when the “officials” step off.) We will have flags, banners, etc. but you can bring your own posters especially this year around the war clouds forming over North Korea and Iran.
Armistice Day Program starts at Sam Adams Park in Fanuiel Hall at about 2:00 PM
After the finish of the march at City Hall Plaza we will walk across the street for our Armistice Day program at Sam Adams Park at Fanueil Hall from about 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. This year’s MC will be our Smedley Butler Brigade-VFP coordinator Vietnam veteran Dan Luker. We are lining up speakers knowledgeable about the impending war clouds over Korea and Iran and the long continuing ones over Afghanistan. We will have music, poetry and other speakers. As usual we will have our canopy up where you can purchase VFP clothing, media, and buttons.
See you all on Saturday November 11th at noon at Beacon and Charles –thanks- Executive Committee-Smedley Butler Brigade-VFP
OCTOBER 3—Two days ago, the Spanish state unleashed massive repression aimed at preventing an independence referendum in Catalonia. Over two million people defied the savage police mobilization to cast their ballots, and 90 percent voted in favor of an independent republic in Catalonia.
The Castilian rulers of the capitalist Spanish state will brook no opposition to the sacrosanct unity of the Spanish prison house of peoples, which denies the right of self-determination to the Catalan, Basque and Galician nations. The state of siege imposed by Madrid is a powerful confirmation that the national oppression of Catalans—and of the Basques—cannot end short of independence. Autonomy is a fraud—Madrid retains the whip hand. The only principled position for revolutionary Marxists is to demand the immediate independence of these nations and to rally the workers of Spain and Europe to this struggle.
In the lead-up to the vote, the Castilian chauvinists who rule the country from Madrid declared the referendum illegal, with the full backing of the European Union. Thousands of Policía Nacional (National Police) and paramilitary Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) cops were sent to suppress any move toward self-determination by the oppressed Catalan people. The Catalan government’s funds were seized, many of its leaders arrested and offices raided. Millions of ballots, posters and official ballot boxes were confiscated. Tens of thousands of protesters who took to the streets are threatened with sedition charges. Hundreds of websites promoting the referendum were taken down by the Spanish authorities, including those of the Catalan government. Anyone deemed responsible for conducting the referendum is facing jail time and massive fines.
Thousands occupied schools overnight and massed before dawn to ensure the referendum went ahead. As the polls opened, riot cops smashed their way into polling stations, beating voters, dragging them out into the street and seizing ballot boxes. People outside were hit with rubber bullets, tear gas and police clubs. Nearly 900 people were injured.
Despite the police terror tactics, the Catalan people remain unbowed. As we go to press, a “national stoppage” called by the Catalan government, business associations and unions to protest the repression has brought Catalonia to a halt. It is urgent for the working class in Catalonia and throughout Spain to rally in defense of Catalan national rights. Working people throughout Spain must demand: Drop all charges against independentistes! Guardia Civil and Policía Nacional out of Catalonia!
The brutality unleashed by the Spanish government against the people of Catalonia is reminiscent of the long years of the Franco dictatorship. The Catalans and the republican Basques played a vanguard role in the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s. But the triumph of counterrevolution in 1939 under Generalissimo Francisco Franco resulted in decades of bloody repression of the working class and of the Catalan and Basque nations. Thus, after Franco died in 1975, the struggles of the oppressed nations were mainly expressed along national lines, in contrast to the 1930s, when the working classes of these same nations fought directly for power.
Spain’s right-wing governing Partido Popular (Popular Party) is descended from the Franco regime. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declares that the Catalan independence referendum violated the 1978 Spanish constitution. Maintaining the unity of the Spanish state is central to the chauvinist, anti-democratic constitution of 1978, which established the monarchy as bonapartist overlord. The social-democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and Stalinist Partido Comunista de España (PCE, now buried in Izquierda Unida) criminally supported the establishment of this reactionary constitution while mouthing platitudes about “self-determination.” To maintain the “indivisibility” of Spain, bloody police-state repression has long been used against militant fighters for Basque independence, including by PSOE governments.
Tens of thousands have rallied in Euskal Herria (Basque Country) in support of the Catalan referendum, and the Basque independence movement has been given a boost by the developments in Catalonia. The Basque and Catalan nations, each of which straddles the border between France and Spain, are oppressed by both these capitalist states. Solidarity protests have also taken place in the Catalan and Basque regions of France.
As we wrote in the document of the ICL’s most recent International Conference, “The fate of the provinces forcibly retained within France strongly depends on what will happen on the Spanish side of the border. We call for the independence of the Basque Country and Catalonia, in the North and the South” (“The Struggle Against the Chauvinist Hydra,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 65, Summer 2017).
Workers Must Fight for National Liberation
The struggle for the liberation of the oppressed nations can be a powerful motor force for revolutionary struggle of the proletariat against the Spanish capitalist order. But the central leadership of the countrywide trade-union federations, headquartered in Madrid, is imbued with the putrid anti-Basque and anti-Catalan chauvinism of its own capitalist rulers. Thus, the day after the Catalan people voted for independence, the national leaderships of the two largest trade-union confederations in Spain, the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), issued a statement opposing any “Unilateral Declaration of Independence.” They wrote: “We do not endorse that position nor that political strategy.”
Such chauvinism is not only an obstacle to the struggle for liberation of the oppressed nationalities, but also undermines struggle by all workers in the Spanish prison house of peoples against their own capitalist exploiters. The Madrid government’s offensive against Catalonia has emboldened the Spanish fascists, who have held demonstrations under the call “Catalonia is Spain.” These forces represent a deadly threat to all workers, immigrants and oppressed minorities in Spain, and the working class must mobilize to stop them.
In Catalonia in recent weeks, hundreds of thousands have defied the Castilian rulers, their constitution, courts and cops—the so-called democratic order. Secondary and university students went on strike, while farmers drove their tractors into the cities and formed blockades to protect voters. But most significant were the actions carried out by unions in defense of the referendum. The port workers in Barcelona and Tarragona refused to service the ships being used to accommodate the Policía Nacional and Guardia Civil. The firefighters union also took action, forming security cordons around voting sites.
The working class has enormous potential social power that must be marshalled in support of the struggle for independence. It is absolutely necessary to defend Catalonia’s bourgeois pro-independence leaders against the repression from Madrid. However, workers must be politically independent from these capitalist politicians and their parties. These include not only the bourgeois nationalists of the Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català (PDeCAT) and of the Esquerra Republicana (ERC), but also the left nationalists of the Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP). Although claiming to be socialist, the CUP is a petty-bourgeois party that has propped up the bourgeois government of PDeCAT and the ERC in the Generalitat (Catalan parliament).
For the Catalan bourgeoisie, independence means being able to rule over those whom they exploit for profit. They will deploy their own forces of capitalist repression, such as the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police), against the working class. It would be suicidal for the proletariat and oppressed to rely on the Catalan bourgeoisie in the fight for national liberation. For a Catalan workers republic!
The way forward was shown by the Bolshevik Party in Russia, which won the oppressed nationalities to its banner by championing the right of national self-determination. As Leon Trotsky, leader together with V.I. Lenin of the proletarian 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, wrote:
“In order to achieve liberation and a cultural lift, the oppressed nationalities were compelled to link their fate with that of the working class. And for this they had to free themselves from the leadership of their own bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties—they had to make a long spurt forward, that is, on the road of historic development.”
— The History of the Russian Revolution (1932)
Down With the Imperialist EU!
The Catalan bourgeois nationalists have long looked to the European Union (EU) for their salvation. Following the referendum, Catalan government leader Carles Puigdemont declared: “I must appeal directly to Europe.... The European Union can no longer continue looking the other way.” In response, the European Commission made the EU’s position clear: “Yesterday’s vote in Catalonia was not legal.” It went on to reiterate that “this is an internal matter for Spain that has to be dealt with in line with the constitutional order of Spain.”
The EU is determined to keep the current European borders intact, fearful that the breakup of Spain or any other member state could bring down the whole EU house of cards. As Marxists, we are opposed on principle to the EU, which is a reactionary consortium of capitalist countries. The EU aims to increase profits by squeezing workers throughout Europe, while its dominant members—Germany and, to a lesser extent, France—use it to further subordinate the weaker European countries. Our opposition to the EU is proletarian internationalist. We fight for workers revolutions throughout the continent, culminating in a voluntary Socialist United States of Europe.
Following the global financial crisis of 2008, the EU dictated vicious austerity to Spain, while having the common euro currency deprived Spain of the option of devaluing its currency to alleviate the crisis. The then-PSOE government in Madrid willingly enforced the EU’s austerity measures. For their part, the Catalan nationalists in the Generalitat also administered brutal austerity against workers and the oppressed.
The EU has also pushed union-busting across Europe. In 2014, the EU’s Court of Justice decreed that the Spanish port unions are in violation of EU rules on “free enterprise.” The Rajoy government issued a decree to force compliance with the EU rules. In response, thousands of port workers throughout Spain, including in Catalonia and the Basque Country, waged a series of strikes earlier this year against these attempts to smash their union.
Reformist Left: Wedded to the Bourgeois Order
Sundry reformists in Spain have for years opposed independence for Catalonia, while pretending to fight for self-determination. The Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras (CRT), affiliated to the neo-Morenoite Trotskyist Fraction-Fourth International, vociferously claimed to defend the “right to decide” in the referendum while openly opposing Catalan independence. They wrote: “We don’t call for a Yes vote because we are neither independentistas nor do we share the republican and constitutional process proposed by Junts pel Sí [bourgeois-nationalist parliamentary coalition] and the CUP” (izquierdadiario.es, 27 September).
The Izquierda Revolucionaria/Esquerra Revolucionària (IR/ER) of Peter Taaffe’s Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) likewise trumpeted, “The Catalan people have the right to decide!” but were careful to assure chauvinist opponents of independence that “anyone who does not support independence has the clear choice not to vote for it.” Then, on the day before millions voted for an independent Catalan republic...these consummate opportunists came out for independence.
The Taaffeites spent years inside the social-democratic PSOE and fully imbibed its national chauvinism. As recently as 2014, the IR/ER explicitly opposed independence in a pamphlet titled ¡Por el derecho a la autodeterminación, por el socialismo! (For the Right of Self-Determination, for Socialism!): “The task of the workers movement, there as here, in Euskal Herria and Catalunya, in the Spanish state as a whole and in Europe, is not to build new states and erect new borders, but to build socialism on a global scale.”
The breakup of the Castilian-chauvinist Spanish state, with its monarchy and Francoist nostalgists, would represent an enormous step forward for the struggles of all working people in Spain against the capitalist rulers. The struggle for national liberation of Catalonia and the Basque Country is integrally linked to the fight to overthrow capitalist rule throughout Spain and France. What is needed to lead the workers and oppressed in this fight are Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard parties, national sections of a reforged Fourth International. Down with the Spanish monarchy! For workers republics!
